Announcing Elemental: War of Magic

Announcing Elemental: War of Magic

Epic Fantasy Turn-Based Strategy, Coming in 2010!

Stardock announced its next major PC game, Elemental: War ofMagic today. Stardock, the company that has released such award-winning PC games such as Galactic Civilizations, Ironclad’s Sins of a Solar Empire and is nearing the release date of Gas Powered Games’ Demigod has set the retail launch date of Elemental: War of Magic (www.elementalgame.com) for the first quarter of 2010 at $49.95 with a public beta starting next Spring.

Like all Stardock titles, Elemental: War of Magic will include no on-disk DRM and will be available for re-download and updates through the Impulse digital distribution platform (www.impulsedriven.com) regardless of wherever it is purchased.

Elemental: War of Magic is set in a world filled with magic and ancient lore. As the ruler of your kingdom, you must expand your empire through a combination of magical power, military might, diplomatic skill, technological advancement and bold adventuring. Your worlds will be of your choosing, or players are free to create their own.

The story of Elemental: War of Magic begins with an immersive single player campaign with you being the only person in your kingdom with the ability to channel magic through mysterious shards of magic that are scattered across the world. These shards, a result of a tremendous cataclysm that occurred a century prior when powerful beings waged war across the world, are the source of much of the world’s magic.

With the powers of old now gone, you now hold the key to the use of magic in your land. As ruler of your land and a channeler of magic, you must decide how much of your power to imbue into your heroes as you build new cities, explore dungeons, perfect spells of ever-increasing power and negotiate with friends and foes alike. Other channelers in the world, whether they be of the race of Men, The Fallen or the Beasts, are also able to access magic and may not share your vision of the world.

Harnessing the technology of ImpulseReactor™, ground-breaking multiplayer modes include traditional skirmish modes as well as a persistent universe mode. Additionally, integrated modding support allows players to submit maps, items, creatures, races, technologies, spells, buildings, environments and much more from right within the game and become available to all players of the game seamlessly.

Sweet! EWoM has its own forum now. The fact it is based on the Silmarillion has me really stoked for it to be honest. It was one of my favorite stories as a child - along with all the other JRRT stuff. I'm a big head on graphics but to be honest game play will always win the day. Let's hope it really rocks. I so miss MoM, MoO & SimC. Anyway I really like the artistic style. It has that 70's fantasy graphic art pen and ink visual quality to it, a very elegant touch if done right to be sure - at least for an old timer like myself. It puts me in mind of the images of Alan Lee, Darrell Sweet & John Howe and the old P&P modules. So far this is looking extremely promising. The forum and the website are also very spiffy as well. I hope you guys release a WB skin for this like Sins.

These are all early shots of the game which is very early in development still.

Ah, sorry, you misunderstood me. What I meant was that the screenshot I've posted looks very nice and since fluff is always good for anouncements, you should have included that one. It wasn't meant as a statement about the art direction/quality of art at all.

Edit: I do like the art direction even in this early state. And I suck at being goofy, so'll better stop that then. :/

I like the art direction too. I like the fact that we can call it an art direction. Stylized beats realistic for computer games in my opinion. One problem I often have with old games is that you can't actually make anything out, but this varies from game to game depending on the quality of the art much more than the engine. Possibly also the colour blindness issue. There are even some modern games where I can't really see stuff (like people in COD4...).

Anyway, it looks clean, colourful and bold. Excepting perhaps the castle, that's a bit noisy somehow - too many black borders on small details? I wonder how much of it will be animated? I'm thinking that with the snow falling and the river moving, perhaps the light on the tower pulsating, it could be really pretty.

Could we have cloud shadows as well please? That would make overland weather spells really shine - or not shine if you're using negative magic.

Art style: Not my kind of thing (although maybe it'll grow on me as screenshots of the game nearer it's finished state are released). Overall I'm probably not going to be desparate to buy it, it'scertainly one I could be convinced to buy (and hence I'll be keeping an eye out for it when it's released).

I'm a lot less concerned with how a game looks than how it *plays*. So long as the graphics are at least functional and I can make out everything reasonably well, anything else (visual-wise) is just gravy.

Also, I'm loving the size of the game world. That map looks freakin' huge!

Can't wait to play this game. Everything about it sounds totally sweet.

Because a lot of people want an open-world 4x game set in a fantasy setting, of which there are very few. Most 4x games are in a sci-fi setting, so this marks a nice change of pace.

Besides which, Stardock is only now wrapping up the 2.0 update for GalCiv2. Give them a break, man! There's no way they'd go straight to work on GC3 already. Indeed, Brad himself has said on numerous occasions that the next GalCiv game is at least three years away -- probably later.